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Comment by jansan | Hacker News Reader

A quick reminder that South Korea is closer to the equator than Spain or Greece.

It doesn’t matter. I’m in Canada in a tight valley where it snows a ton and my rooftop solar makes $1000 of power a year. Solar is so cheap now, and still falling, it makes sense literally everywhere.

You have a big peek in early summer/late spring and a nosedive during winter. Still need generation capacity for winter.

Why aren't new developments including rooftop solar as a standard selling feature? If it makes sense it should be a no brainer right? Your new $800,000 home comes with a solar installation so you never pay for heating, cooling, power supply.

New homes should be built with

1) EV chargers or 240V outlets in the garage

2) Heat pump water heater

3) Heat pump for HVAC

4) Induction stove

5) Solar panels, better yet, solar roofs

6) Main panel that supports V2X (vehicle to home, to grid)

7) Ethernet cabling throughout, we can make most devices PoE, also enable smart home

This can eliminate $ 1,000+ energy bills, which are now split between gas bills for two cars, natural gas for the water heater, heating, and cooking.

Sounds a lot like actual building requirements in the Netherlands, except 6 and 7, because the city hall hates cars and doesn't care much about IOT

This is definitely nitpicky, but a better translation (imo) for "gemeente" is municipality. You're spot on otherwise. Tbf though, in much of the Randstad, a car is not a requirement for a good life and if the new residential developments are properly equipped with good OV connections, then we should use that space for parking to instead build more homes.

Since moving from the US to (rural) Limburg, I've been shocked how much less I need to drive. My partner still drives to work every day, but even then, they will come home and then walk to the supermarket instead of stopping with the car.

I believe this is due in the UK (from 2027) which is quite far north from the equator: new homes need a certain percentage of the roof covered in solar cells.

It won't be enough to be self sufficient but it does offset a bit I guess

My London-based solar panels make us (net) self sufficient across the year.

They produce about 3,800kWh every year - which is bang on the average home electrical consumption.

Even in winter they offset our bills by a decent amount.

Labor and permitting costs.

Those are already a large part in housing costs, and rooftop solar panels? That's both roofing work and installation of advanced electric equipment. And the market doesn't seem to have that many people who base their buying decisions on whether the house has solar panels installed.

Labor costs are going to stick around until we get humanoid robots to work well. But the permitting situation could sure benefit from a lot of regulation being purged.

And South Korea is at about the same latitude as Tennessee and North Carolina.

I will never stop to amaze me how far to the south the USA is compared to Europe on average. I live near Berlin and even most Canadians live further to the south than me.

Europe is uniquely hot for how far North it is. It's due to Gulf Stream and we might lose it at some point as the climate change progresses.

The West coast is much more similar though. Paris is at a latitude between Seattle and Vancouver while San Francisco is a little south of Lisbon. Both have pretty comparable climates.

In contrast, it will never amaze me how far north Europe is. Canada weather is cold and yet y'all live even further north!

Gulf Stream.

AMOC collapse will be brutal.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...>

That is generally worse for PV potential, clouds, rain etc

Being further north does have some advantages. If the panels are angled more to get a better view of the sun they will also be better at shedding snow loads.

There was a recent discussion here on vertical panels. The data was better than I’d have guessed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45414215

The amount of power you get from panels in winter is pathetically low with or without snow.

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